Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I will come back later to the Points for Life initiative and where it is at now. When I visited schools I met the principals the physical education teachers and one of the questions I asked was where physical education sits in terms of priority on the syllabus in primary school. It is at the bottom. Where does the physical well-being of the children who are going to school sit in terms of priority? It is at the top. Why is physical education not taken seriously in schools? It is not really taken seriously in schools.

Karl mentioned the points for fitness. My Points for Life initiative was the subject of a motion in the Seanad, November 12 months ago, and on foot of it a committee was set up and it met representatives of schools. Professor Niall Moyna, Professor O'Shea and one representative from five Departments were on that committee. We met month after month and discussed the exact same issues at our meetings as we are discussing here today but the question is how we bring about change. I was getting completely frustrated with it at one stage and I said "Forget about it". Coming from my background in sports I understand how simple it is to implement these changes. We did that with the children in my running community from a young age and they have now become adults and parents themselves and they understand the benefits they got through education.

If we consider the education side, Senator Catherine Byrne referred to parents. This must be parent-led, schools-led, national governing bodies-led and community-led and they also must come together. However, everybody wants to go to the schools, whether it is to deal with the issue of cyberbullying, physical fitness or obesity. The notion is put forward that in order to deal with every issue we must approach the schools. However, the biggest problem I have in implementing the Points for Life infinitive, and it is points for life as opposed to points for college, are the school teachers, the various unions and the training colleges. The reason for that is that from my research and the meetings I have had, I have discovered that in terms of physical education delivery in primary schools, there is no real qualifications for delivering simple programmes because physical education is basically to play a little bit of ball here and play a little bit of ball there. We have to nip it in the bud and instill fundamental skills, not only physical literacy skills but movement skills in young children because I have seen the benefit of doing that. If we can instil those fundamental skills in children they will become secondary school students and later parents and ten, 15 or 20 years down the road they will instil those skills in their children.